An analysis of the digital university phenomenon: dilemmas, new opportunities

Abstract

Universities are institutions with a long history and have undergone many changes over the centuries. In recent years, these changes became significantly visible. This is due to the rapid development of technology. The digitalization has a major impact on the university’s functions performing. But these processes are not linear or simple but are evolving into complex, ambivalent, and contradictory processes. Digital universities have reasonably taken their place in the education system. Together with the increasing of workloads, bureaucratization, the need for marketing control, the need to reduce costs, large-scale savings, these structures have developed active accomplishments using all channels and filling all possible variants of codes and formats, numerous and diverse actions, managed by digital and technological support. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the most relevant effects and dilemmas of the implementation of digital technologies in university education and research from the socio-material point of view of the phenomenon of “digital university”. At these terms one proposes an analysis that goes from the particular to the general is conducted. First, the effects of digitalization on teaching and research are analyzed, some ideas about the possible future associated with digital technology are developed, and finally, some ideas about how to analyze the impact of technology in the university from a critical point of view are offered.